Category: thinking

  • Letting go

    As prepared for the inevitability of such things when your vet calls you up with blood work results and does a lot of heavy sighing during the conversation, it is never easy to accept that a pet is dying. And probably faster than you had hoped.

    One of my Maine Coons, Fennekin (named after the Pokémon), has been ill for a while. She was borderline having kidney issues a year ago, but it rapidly progressed until she was showing the beginnings of kidney failure just a month or so ago.

    She was promptly put on a special diet with additive to help her kidneys. We thought we saw improvement, even. Until we didn’t.

    Last night, she refused her dinner. And treats. She loves treats and loves that she’s been getting stinky, fishy, wet food while the others get kibble. She skipped breakfast and went into a space away from everyone. She refused lunch.

    We’re taking her into the vet today, not expecting to bring her home. For thousands of dollars, they can keep her alive. Maybe a month or two. Maybe as little as three days. But her death is inevitable. And soon.

    There are people who will spend their life savings keeping a pet alive without once questioning if the pet has any meaningful quality of life while they are kept alive on infusions and tubes. I’m not that kind of person, which will upset some readers. I ask myself, as miserable as she looks right now, if Fenn would thank me for the ordeal or if she might be happier without feeling so damned sick.

    And it makes me a little ill myself to know that I have pretty much made the decision that if they can’t keep her alive for the long weekend through some magic so everyone can say goodbye, I’m okay with letting her go.

    The appointment is in less than 90 minutes. We’ll see what they say then, but the prognosis from my perspective is not good. She looks like she feels horrible.

    What I will miss most is her trilling as she follows me around, wanting me to talk to her, give her a scratch under the chin.

    better days

  • ravensweald.art notes

    A couple of new things that I am trying out on the new site…

    A Curated List

    I’m leaning in on the idea of nontraditional means of cross-seeding readers amongst other writers I have met and appreciate on WordPress over the years. In the old days, they called it a blogroll and it sat prominently in the sidebar of your front blog page. This one is intended to honor the more “Zen” like aesthetic of the site and is tucked away behind a menu item. You can check it out here: Elsewhere

    If your name is not on the list, it is likely because we either don’t banter back and forth or your creative output on your site is less than once a week on average. No insult intended if you feel you should be included. Let me know and I’ll consider adding you.

    Reader Feeds: Entire Posts → Excerpts

    I’ve decided to start crafting “Argument” excerpts instead of publishing the entire episode part to the feed.

    Each feed entry will now read in order: Series/Book, “The Argument”, “Read this episode at Ravensweald” and a copyright notice. If you are using mobile JetPack, you may need to configure the app to open the actual page in a browser instead of in the app’s more limited browser, although the site is so lightweight that only the readability features are impacted (i.e., do not appear). And the floating Ko-Fi button… but I don’t know how many folks feel like buying a coffee anyway.

    This is quickly addressed by tapping the compass button that appears on the Jetpack browser, which will launch it in a proper browser.

    This is to encourage people to step outside the bubble of WordPress Reader, just like many of the other design decisions. Being in the bubble is not a bad thing, but it does have a “fixed” feel to it, which I think adds to the eye fatigue. Besides, the readability tweaks are really cool. 😁

    Other plans

    I have so many plans. But I really should get to actually writing the story more than designing the blog, so…

  • It is alive!

    If you haven’t figured it out by my recent posts, I purchased another domain to host my longer-form content. And then I spent the weekend building a custom WordPress installation to test out several hypotheses.

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  • New serialized fiction site (incoming)

    Hey all —

    As my post indicated yesterday, I had thought more about forking off the serialized fiction to another site to improve overall readability of my fiction content and the content stream here. Well, I did it.

    It is still a work in progress, and not ready to be public-facing. But maybe today or early this week it will be ready.

    In the meantime, however, I thought I would explain the philosophy surrounding my decision.

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  • Looks around, sees things

    I’ve been doing lots of navel gazing when I haven’t been writing Vengeance, My Heart, which is why my activity has diminished somewhat on the site.

    Some of it is getting around to coming up with a useful term and framework that I can hand people who ask me about my spiritual practice. I know, most folks are not clamoring for information here, so that isn’t the issue. But it does come up in conversations at times. And I’ve discovered that people prefer a tidy couple of words when it comes to answers of that sort rather than my rambling, ambling version of it (which is almost as much about what I am not as it is about what I am). Plus, it is time to settle down with it without sounding so darned intellectual about it.

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  • Wandering eyes

    I will admit it. I occasionally check out other platforms to deliver my writing on. You know, like that meme of the guy checking out another girl while holding his significant other’s hand and her being appalled… Yeah, I’m the guy, the sig other is WordPress and I am ogling the other services.

    While there is a lot of positives to be said about WordPress, there is also 20+ years of baggage that comes with the platform. In trying to be everything to everyone it does have elements that are bloated for your average blogger. Some of that slow-down is self-inflicted when you add plugins (which have their own security risks), but there are plenty of parts under the hood that most of you never have seen, let alone used or needed.

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  • Half-Penny Thoughts — 10apr26

    This morning, I asked Claude to provide a general evaluation of the poetry on this site, mostly for shits and giggles. Sometimes I feel I am too close to my own poetry to critically evaluate what I write, so I felt it would be helpful to get the opinion from “someone” without a stake in providing me feedback — not cog greasing or a sense of friendly obligation to make me happy. [Note: Claude was not informed that I am the author of this site, so it has no reason to lean into saying nice things to me about my poetry.]

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  • Half-penny thoughts — 06apr26

    Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

    A little bit of venting this Monday morning. If you are not into health-related posts or venting in general, you probably can skip this post.

    About twenty years ago, I went to a general practitioner with an earnest complaint about some generalized pain I was experiencing that I couldn’t explain. It was sometimes in my joints, and sometimes muscular. Sometimes both. I asked what it might be, acknowledging that it might have some of the source being in arthritis. I also suggested that because my mother had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, that it might be a factor in my increasing frequency of inexplicable pain.

    She laughed out loud at my suggestion. And I mean, nothing held back at all.

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  • Doing The Do

    Some days you just want to do you. Hell, sometimes weeks go by where you just want to do you.

    Or, at least, that’s how it works for me.

    No explaining. No apologies. No regrets. No accommodations. Just doing.

    What about you?

  • Half-Penny Thoughts — 23mar26

    I’ll have to admit that I am mighty surprised by the lack of discoverable serialized fiction via WordPress Reader. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t exist, but either WordPress Reader doesn’t recognize the term, people don’t use “serialized fiction” (or variations of it) for tags or categories, or there are just not that many folks publishing such things that are connected to WordPress.

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